Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton during an interview with him and his campaign team at their office in Danbury, Conn, on Monday, March 31, 2014. Boughton is running for the GOP nomination for governor of Connecticut.

Stopping short of declaring mission accomplished, GOP governor and lieutenant governor running mates Mark Boughton and Mark Lauretti said Tuesday they had collected enough signatures for Lauretti to qualify for the party's August primary and make them eligible for $1.4 million in public campaign funds.

Lauretti, the 12-term Shelton mayor, needed 8,190 enrolled Republicans statewide to sign his petitions to be eligible to run for lieutenant governor. He said more than 9,000 people signed his petition.

Boughton recruited Lauretti to the ticket last month after his original running mate, Heather Bond Somers, severed ties.

A 4 p.m. deadline for the running mates to file petitions with local registrars of voters came and went with little fanfare from Lauretti and Boughton, Danbury's longest serving mayor.

"We are cautiously optimistic," Boughton said. "It's a laborious and difficult process. A lot of times people think they're Republican and vote Republican. But then they check the card, and they're unaffiliated or a Democrat."

Boughton's viability as a candidate for governor hinges on his ability to pool campaign contributions with Lauretti to get to the $250,000 fundraising threshold of the state's so-called clean elections program, which limits individual contributions to $100.

Lauretti raised more than $100,000 in an unsuccessful bid for governor before shifting gears to the lieutenant governor's race.

"It's a moving target," Lauretti said when asked about qualifying. "Look, I feel good about the effort that was given. Whether it's a qualifying response is anyone's guess."

It could take until next Tuesday for the final petitions to be forwarded from the registrars to the Secretary of the State's Office as part of the certification process. Within seven days of receiving a petition, registrars must validate the individual names and provide a tally to the secretary of the state.

"I'm sure that they submitted considerably more than what they needed," said Av Harris, a spokesman for Secretary of the State Denise Merrill. "We always recommend to people that they have some kind of buffer."

Boughton and Lauretti are bracing for potential challenges during the certification process. Last month, a West Hartford lawyer allied with Tom Foley, the GOP's endorsed candidate for governor, filed public records requests with the registrars in Danbury and Greenwich seeking to inspect the petitions.

"I would suggest that Tom Foley has more things to worry about," Lauretti said. "In a state that is not Republican friendly, he needs all the friends that he can get."

"Smart politicians would keep their powder dry because if I don't qualify, you still want to enlist their services because you need everybody," Lauretti said. "I have a pretty good base of support in this part of the state, which Tom Foley could use."

Chris Cooper, a spokesman for Foley, the former U.S. ambassador to Ireland under President George W. Bush and the GOP's nominee for governor in 2010, said the campaign won't interfere.

"Our campaign trusts the registrars to first determine if the number of signatures is sufficient to qualify and to verify that they're valid," Cooper said. "And the Foley campaign will play no oversight role in any way as part of that process."

Former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker, a candidate for lieutenant governor and running mate of state Senate Minority Leader John McKinney, R-Fairfield, said the duo won't stand in the way of Lauretti.

"We're not in that business," Walker said.

The winner of the Aug. 12 primary will face Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, a Democrat in his first term, who national pundits have pegged as vulnerable in the November general election.

"We're monitoring the process and it remains to be seen what impact this will have on the race," Jerry Labriola Jr., chairman of the state GOP, said of the Boughton-Lauretti petition drive. "My focus as state chairman remains on preparing our party for a race to defeat Dan Malloy and the Democrat ruling class. I'm eager to get on with the real race."